“We discovered that the most populated country on earth is building houses, districts, and cities with no one in them,” began a report on 60 Minutes which aired on March 3rd, 2013. The news program’s timeless correspondent, Lesley Stahl, traveled to the city of Zhengzhou accompanied by the Hong Kong based financial adviser, Gillem Tulloch, and got the low down on China’s ghost city phenomenon.

For the past few years I’ve been chasing reports of ghost cities cities around China, but I rarely ever find one that qualifies for this title. Though the international media claims that China is building cities for nobody I often find something very different upon arrival. The New South China Mall had a lot of empty shops but it turned out to be a thriving entertainment center, Dantu showed that an initially stagnant new city can become populated, and I found that Xinyang’s new district, a place called a ghost city since 2010, wasn’t even close to being built yet. The 60 Minutes report served as portent that there are really are large scale ghost cities in China. Or so it appeared.

I ventured to Zhengzhou right after 60 Minutes filmed in its Zhengdong New District. I was there when the report aired. Stahl claimed that she found this area deserted:

“We found what they call a ghost city of new towers with no residents, desolate condos, and vacant subdivisions uninhabited for miles, and miles, and miles.”

As she narrated, video footage showed scenes of tightly packed high-rises sticking up out of the landscape like a bed of nails stretching far off into the horizon.

“They’re building cities, giant cities are being built with people not coming to live here,” she continued.

Watch the 60 Minutes report

Now watch my report

Zhengzhou is the capital of Henan province and has a rapidly growing population that’s topped eight million. Over the past decade, construction crews have been building a new district in its northeastern suburbs. The rationale here is simple: it is easier and more effective to build a new city than it is to completely tear down and then rebuild an existing one. This is an urban planning strategy that many big cities in China are in the active process of conducting to varying degrees.

The layouts of many older cities of China cannot easily be made to fill the demands of the modern era. Rather than fighting long, losing battles against transportation, urban migration, and sanitation, the Chinese are just starting over and building new cities from scretch. The old city of Zhengzhou is currently packed bumper to bumper with automobiles — its curvy, narrow, organically created streets are a warzone of traffic. The city is a scrambled mess that has been brought to a breaking point by a population that’s overgrown its bounds and consumes more resources than ever — so a pressure valve has been released in its northeastern quadrant, and the Zhengdong New District was created.

Zhengdong New District financial center

Many of China’s new urban districts are not being built for new migrants coming into cities, but for people looking to escape the congestion and insanity of the old cities. So, generally speaking, many of these new cities are being created to accommodate the country’s rising wealthy and middle classes — who tend to drive personal automobiles, leave large resource consumption footprints, and, simply speaking, want more space and things.

So the eastern suburbs of Zhengzhou were transformed into a rolling sea of brand new high-rises, soaring skyscrapers, elevated highways, museums, exhibition centers, and shopping malls. This new district currently covers 115 square kilometers, roughly the size of San Francisco, and there are plans to nearly quadruple it. Zhengdong was designed to hold two million people and act as the city’s upper/ middle class epicenter — a new city for the rich.

Likewise, no amount of monumentality was spared in the building of this zone. China’s new cities are often made to be recognized, they are built to be epic. The landscape in Zhengdong is littered with post-modern landmarks, oddly shaped buildings, and a kaleidoscopic offering of differing and contrasting architectural styles — the inevitable result of Chinese engineers and architects being given a completely blank urban canvas to paint a new city upon. So Zhengdong has a museum that looks like a clutch of golden Easter eggs, an exhibition center shaped like a paper fan, a chubby skyscraper that seems to have been modeled off of an overfed leech, and a dozen or so flamboyant, built-to-be-recognized towers.

Map of Zhengdong CBD

At the heart of this freshly minted urban colossus is the Zhengdong CBD, a financial district that was created to be world class. It was designed by Kisho Kurokawa, and has more akin to something a mad architect would see in a dream than actually build in real life. It is laid out on a circular plan, and has two concentric ring roads which make the area look like a giant archery target from above. These two rings are lined with corporate towers, luxury high-rises, and shopping malls, while the bull’s eye is made up of a manmade lake and a park.

The area that 60 Minutes shot in surely looked “ghost-like” on film, but when I arrived there I found an entirely different scene. I found a sparkling new financial district that was full of sparkling new cars, well-dressed pedestrians, corporate offices of major businesses, skyscrapers full of occupied offices, expensive coffee houses, laundry hanging in the windows of luxury condos, there were cars parked in nearly every available parking space, and signs of life everywhere. There was nothing desolate about the Zhengdong CBD, it appeared to be functioning as planned.

I located the landmarks that have continuously been used to proclaimed this place a “ghost city,” but I could not snap a photo or take a video which replicated the desolate scenes that have been broadcast around the world. There were just too many people, too many cars, too many businesses, and my shots kept getting buggered by the life that’s sprouting everywhere here. Whereas other media sources are consistently able to get videos that show a ghost city, I was only able to get shots that showed a living and breathing new district.

Zhengzhou museum

I walked into the Novotel tower and took an elevator up to the top floor. I wanted to capture the same shot that the 60 Minutes crew made famous a few weeks ago. There are two towers that stand side by side in Zhengdong that have flower petal-like facades emerging from their roofs. 60 Minutes got a shot of one of them by going up in the other. So that’s what I did. Before getting in the elevator I read the directory of business that had offices in the tower, and I could not help but to note that every floor was occupied.

On the top floor I walked into an office and asked permission to take photos out their window. The two women behind the desk nodded and I took a video of the northwestern side of the Zhengdong district. But I could not get the view I wanted of the tower’s flower topped twin, so I descended one floor and made for an office on the opposite side.

Novotel tower

I walked though an open door into an large office that was full cubicles and people at work in front of computers. Nobody stopped me as I made for the windows that would provide access to the scene I wanted to capture. There was a row of private offices in my way, so I walked into one and asked the guy sitting behind the desk if I could take a photo. He obliged with a “why not” shrug and showed a moderate amount of amusement at my intrusion. The windows this far up were filthy, and another worker quickly jumped to my aid and opened one of them for me. I got what I was after.

Did 60 Minutes actually go into a skyscraper that was full of businesses, walk into an office full of workers, film a district full of life out of the windows, and then claim that it was all deserted?

View of Zhengdong CBD from the Novetel tower

I then walked a short way to the abandoned mall that 60 Minutes filmed in a few weeks before. It is called the Orient Center, and is the place that Stahl claimed to be ” . . all make believe. Non existent supply for non-existent demand.” I stepped through the doors and strode by the security guards as though I had some place to go. But just as I rose my camera to take a shot of the fake Starbucks and Nike signs which were optimistically hung above vacant retail spaces, a voice called out from behind me.

“Hey man! Where are you going?”

“For a walk,” I replied. A twenty-something guy in a business suit appeared from behind me, and it seemed as if I had been caught. His English wasn’t very good but he was trying to use it anyway, so I kept my Mandarin in check and strung him on with a babble of my native tongue as I continued walking. He chose to follow at my heels and struggle over my gibberish rather than simply boot me out the mall.

“Walk with me,” I requested. He obliged. I now had a guide — free of charge.

Fake KFC sign that 60 Minutes filmed

We walked together into belly of the empty mall. Fake signs for Western stores lined both sides of the hallway to demonstrate what this place could look like if it actually had any stores. KFC, Starbucks, Zara, Adidas, Nike were all represented.

“When was this mall built?” I asked my new found wing man.

“Three years ago,” he responded.

“Has there ever been any stores here?”

He answered that the place has always been barren of business.

Soon we came to the end of the “show mall.” We crossed the divide between the make believe and entered into the real. It was truly desolate. The walls no longer had white paneling over them and the floor was no longer tiled. Everything was stripped bare, to the raw. We were enveloped in a grey skeleton of concrete. Apparently, the developers hadn’t seen the point of finishing off a mall that would have no stores in the near future.

Empty halls of the ghost mall

A group of men soon overtook us and marched up a stationary, broken down escalator. I joined them. We went up to the second floor, which was even more bleak and unfinished than the first.

“Are they investors?” I asked my guide about the men whose group I had just crashed.

“No, they are visitors on a business trip,” he responded lightly.

It turned out that the guy who was awkwardly shadowing me was actually a bona fide tour guide for the ghost mall. It was actually his job to give visitors tours of this empty carcass of a shopping center. The group of men that I found myself with were purposefully taken to this abandoned mall as part of their recreational tour of the Zhengdong CBD. It then became very clear that China’s forsaken developments mean something very different to the Chinese than than do to us foreigners.

In China, abandoned malls and ghost cities are not taken as ominous signs of financial uncertainty and impending economic doom, but they are seen as bounties of potential and opportunity. Likewise, the Chinese don’t try to hide their massive, under-populated, and lifeless developments. No, they flaunt them. Nobody here in China is admitting defeat, they are just getting started.

Maybe someday this will be a commercial center?

“Did you know that people in America say that this city doesn’t have any people in it?” I prodded my guide.

He was familiar with the reports I was referring to, and was not shocked by my question.

“This is a new development,” he spoke with finality. He may as well have said Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Things like this take time.

“What do you think of Zhengdong?” he suddenly asked.

“I think it has potential,” I replied. I wanted to say that I think the place is an all out miracle, but I held back — I didn’t want to have to record myself getting all gushy in a report that was intended to tear a hole in this country’s insane over-development.

“What do you think?” I returned the question.

“I work here so I think it is very cool.”

“Do you think there will be stores here?” I then asked

“Yes, in one year,” he spoke with certainty.

This phrase sounded like wishful thinking or public relations BS, but from looking at how this new district has grown in such a short period of time, I couldn’t doubt him.

“More and more people are coming,” he continued.

“Are they coming quickly?”

“Yes, very quickly.”

Fake Nike sign above vacant store

I couldn’t argue, from what I’d seen so far, what we call “Chinese ghost cities” in the West are often really just new cities at various stages of being developed. It is true that we were walking through the skeleton of a mall, but it was one that at least has a chance of being filled with muscle tissue, blood, guts, a heart, and the vital pulse of commerce. We have to remember here that Shanghai’s Pudong business district was very much underused for years after its inception, and now it’s a symbol China’s economic prowess.

China is on a future kick. This is a county that is hastily racing for the future, but is one that is also patient. No alarm bells or whistles are going off in China about ghost cities and failed developments. There is no question here that just about everything that is being built will someday be utilized. Perhaps this is wishful thinking, perhaps it’s naivety, but it’s far too soon to tell.

People gathered in the park in the center of the CBD

I exited one mall and then made for another. Unmentioned in the 60 Minutes report is that right across the way from the Orient Center ghost mall is an even larger shopping center called Mid Town Seven. The only difference is that this one is completely full of shops, restaurants, and people.

The Mid Town Seven mall is actually seven large shopping centers that stretch around the bottom arch of the CBD for seven blocks. I entered this colossus of commerce and found a cheap restaurant. I took out my laptop and got online as I chowed through my meal. I loaded up the 60 Minutes ghost city report and thought it would be interesting to show it to the people working in the restaurant. I invited the waitresses over to watch, and they curiously sat down around me. I pushed play and then roughly translated what was being said on the video. It was like I was telling the girls their future with a free psychic reading. The girls watched as a couple of foreigners stood in the very city they work in — the very place we were currently sitting in — and proclaimed it to be deserted.

“But we are here!” one of the girls exclaimed. The others looked equally perplexed.

“Are they lying?” I asked them.

“Yes, we live here,” another girl chimed in.

I can’t say they were offended by the video, it simply seemed too ridiculous and surreal for them to take seriously. Imagine watching a foreign news report which claimed that the town you live and work in is desolate and abandoned.

Girls watching the 60 Minutes video which claimed nobody lives in their city

But 60 Minutes was not the only major news source to recently cast Zhengdong as being a failed development. Since 2010 this area has been the butt of many major reports in the international media. The Daily Mail called it “China’s largest ghost city,” and the title seems to have stuck. Earlier this month, Business Insider claimed that, “The central business district [of Zhengdong] features a ring of significantly vacant skyscrapers,” and many other sources made similar claims.

High-rises which have people living in them

But it is no secret that Zhengzhou’s new area and the Zhengdong financial district are not ghost towns. For more that two years reports have been published from people who have actually been there which simply say: there are people here, this place is coming alive. In 2011, New Geography visited Zhengdong and fully debunked the claim that it was deserted, the Heartland Institute also made a similar claim the same year, and the Chinese media, of course, has not been quiet about the fact that this new development is not what the big international news agencies say it is. These reports have largely been ignored by the Western mainstream media, who have entrenched themselves so deeply in the position that China is full of ghost cities that it seems difficult for them to climb out and see these places for what they are.

I then left the financial district and headed north into the residential part of the Zhengdong new district. New housing developments were packed in tightly here like a bundle of needles soldered together on the end of a tattooer’s quill. I do not mean to claim in this report that Zhengdong is not over-developed and under-populated. I do not mean to say that this place is functioning at 100% capacity. What I am pointing out is that the truth is spread graciously between two extremes: Zhengdog new district is neither a ghost city nor is it yet thriving. The truth is always more complicate and complex than a 12 minute television news report can capture.

A sea of high-rises stretching across Zhengdong New District

But 60 Minutes simplified the situation by simply calling the entirety of Zhengdong barren and deserted — they went for hype and got it, but rendered their report a work of fiction in the process. They went into skyscrapers full of businesses and then called them abandoned; they showed occupied high-rises and claimed nobody lives in them; they filmed in an abandoned mall but ignored the thriving one nearby; they filmed areas that are not even built yet and used it as an example of how people are not moving into the district.

By the time Stahl and Tulloch arrived, Zhengdong’s GDP was rising by 13.2% per year, and had generated $1.22 billion in tax revenue the year before. 15 major banks, including HSBC, also had their regional headquarters there, which processed 70% of deposits and 60% of all loans in Henan Province. On top of this, Zhengdong was home to 15 universities which brought in 240,000 students and teachers. The place that 60 Minutes claimed to be uninhabited “for miles and miles and miles” actually had 2.5 million residents. Stahl and Tulloch did not find a ghost city in Zhengzhou, they created one.

As I descended the the elevator of the Novotel tower I made the acquaintance of a business man who worked there. We chatted as we walked outside and into the streets together. I then asked him the hallmark question of my ghost city investigation:

“Did you know that the Western media says that nobody lives here?”

“It is not true,” he replied sharply. As he spoke he gestured with a wave of his hand to the city that surrounded us as if to say, “Just look around, it’s obvious that isn’t true.”

I agreed.

“You tell America,” he spoke, “that there are people and business in Zhengdong.”

Wade Shepard is the founder and editor of Vagabond Journey. He has been traveling the world since 1999, through 90 countries. He is the author of the book, Ghost Cities of China, and contributes to The Guardian, Forbes, Bloomberg, The Diplomat, the South China Morning Post, and other publications. Wade Shepard has written 3593 posts on Vagabond Journey. Contact the author.

I feel that the western media is having a hard time wrapping their heads around how things are done in China, it took me a while to realize the magnitude of what China is doing, they are building cities and waiting for people to come. Much like how in the US we would set up office buildings or strip malls and wait for occupants. China seems to be doing this on a much grander scale.

Yes, it’s ethnocentrism on a mass scale. No culture really respects different ways of doing things, but when you’re the international media you should have some notion that not every country does things exact how the United States does them. They treat China like the country is being run by a bunch of buffoons, but they really just don’t understand what’s going on. What’s worse is that they don’t seem to care — they play for their audience. I guess that’s normal.

Not to be unexpected though. The US propaganda machine relies on hype that keeps the masses dull. As long as they are lock-step about certain issues, they can effectively blackout any counter claims. It’s nothing new. Make up a story and tell the story confident that most people will take it at face value, hinting in a sly way that anyone who dares to question it is lying. Few will actually bother to verify it, and those who do? They will be ignored. Especially when it comes to China stories.

China stories that come out of UK+US follow a given checklist:
Something about dragons (optional)
Corruption
Mismanagement
Communism
Tian’anmen
Mao/Deng

Check those off and the story will be put in the headlines with the “reporter” given “status” on all things China.

And for 99% of the stories, it doesn’t matter how something is done, it’s instantly wrong. Bear baiting and catch 22s for everything.
Drought in an area? Talk about poverty, talk about some “failed” policy. But never mention the South-North water transfer project which is designed to cure it. Nope, when talking about that, you’re only allowed to deride it. It’s all “feel good” fluff for the US audience, reminding them that despite the US falling further and further down every ladder, that somehow, everywhere else must somehow be worse.

PM2.5 is another hilarious scandal which no one dares to touch. PM0.5 is the only thing that *might* have risk. The study on which the 2.5 is based is horribly flawed and there is no actual significant result. It’s hype. Chemical composition means everything. Furthermore, early on, the US Embassy started releasing data, and when the Beijing government started monitoring publicly, the numbers were vastly different. Why is that? Simple. The embassy is flawed. Measurements are based on mass, however they do not dry their filters. They don’t care either. Beijing monitoring sites were originally manually operated and they bothered to follow the directions. Yet, Beijing was blasted for “fake” numbers and eventually just resorted to using the same flawed procedure to silence the issue, as the embassy site by nature cannot possibly be inspected. You can see this whenever it rains. The embassy numbers go through the roof in a way that makes no sense, then if a front has moved through that clears out the humidity, the numbers drop. No front? It just gets higher. It’s propaganda and unfortunately there are few who recognize it for what it is.

For these “ghost cities”, you see the same story over and over again. They’ll play it up as long as they can, and then move on to another “new” target while referencing the old ones. It doesn’t matter that the old “ghost cities” are now coming alive… as that goes against the agenda of portraying China as “failing”.

I feel that the western media is having a hard time wrapping their heads around how things are done in China, it took me a while to realize the magnitude of what China is doing, they are building cities and waiting for people to come. Much like how in the US we would set up office buildings or strip malls and wait for occupants. China seems to be doing this on a much grander scale.

Yes, it’s ethnocentrism on a mass scale. No culture really respects different ways of doing things, but when you’re the international media you should have some notion that not every country does things exact how the United States does them. They treat China like the country is being run by a bunch of buffoons, but they really just don’t understand what’s going on. What’s worse is that they don’t seem to care — they play for their audience. I guess that’s normal.

Wade, I just stumbled upon your China blog and I have to commend you for your “investigation” of these so-called ghost cities. I’m very familiar with all those Ordos ghost-city stories that media outlets love to carry, and I feel there’s a strong amount of sensationalism and simplification about them. Thanks for actually making the effort to visit these places and for presenting a much more nuanced and genuine picture. Keep up the good work.

You’ve got be a little biased if you truly think that the number of cars and people in those shots are at the amount they should be for a development of that magnitude. I encourage you to google a picture of any other major city and see if it’s human traffic is congruent to what you have shown us in your images.

They are really not giving this a rest are they? I thought this was pretty much a well covered topic a year and a half ago when I started this project, I had no idea it was just getting going.

They really refuse to understand that these places are not being built for today and the fact that they are underinhabited is not a sign in and of itself that these projects are failing. These places are being built for the future. Whether or not it will play out according to plan is anyone’s guess, but looking at many of these “ghost cities” now and proclaiming them failures or a sign of falling China is far too premature, extremely short sighted, and is pretty much missing the point.

The US has gotten so twisted and warped that it literally cannot understand “investment” as anything that takes longer than a quarter to produce profit. It looks at sprawl and considers it the way things should be. Looks at the mess in India, where there are companies setting up shop with no care for infrastructure and sees it as ideal. It’s a spin on “big government=bad” leftover from the reagan (may he burn in hell) era. The see big government succeed or think ahead rather than fail and it chills them to their bones. Tack on the “let’s fool ourselves into thinking China’s doomed” angle, and it’s crap that sells. As the us descends further into the abyss, look forward to the media continuing to grasp for straws.

Wade, thanks for setting the record straight. Zhengzhou New District’s “ghost city” infamy originated from a survey project by students at Henan College of Economics and Law. They went around and counted light bulbs at night as an experiment in estimating a building’s occupancy. They noted that some buildings in the newest zone, Eastern New District, had 50% occupancy.

This is where the cherry-picked data came from. While some buildings in Zhengzhou Eastern New District, still under construction at that time, did appear to have few residents – the survey reported vast majority of the zones have occupancy rate between 70-85%.

This, combined with outdated Google Map satellite scans of the area, formed the basis of a sensational story. BTW it appears Google had updated images of Zhengzhou and now there are lots of cars on the roads in Zhengzhou New District.

Thanks for this background information. Yes, it is incredible how the international media jumped (and still jumps) all over this story without really attempting to understand what’s really going on. They are in the sensationalism market, and the ghost city story sells. If they really looked into this they would find something that’s far more incredible and amazing and complex than the “simplify then exaggerate” type stories they are turning out. Seriously, the reality behind China’s new city movement is far more sensational than the dummied down ghost city hype.

Wade, what really bothers me is the lack of interest to correct these half-truth and twist of facts. An editor I contacted about this refused to do a follow-up.

And there’s a pattern to this bias. Another example (I will name name) is a New York Times piece by Andrew Jacobs on a supposed anti-corruption journalist, Qi Chonghuai. As it turned out, Qi was a convicted child molester running an on-line rumor extortion racket. This fact was vetted by Jacobs’ primary source for the story, China Urgent Action Work Group. Yet Jacobs has refused to amend his story to date, after numerous inqueries.

There’re more. Have you seen NYT’s story on Lanxiang Vocational School? NYT’s hacker central claim was so outlandish, Chinese netters came up with the meme “Lanxiang is more awesome than Harvard”. In reality Lanxiang churns out cooks and barbers.

Yes, they seem to have this pre-written narrative that they scramble around looking to fill, transforming complex realities into simplified fictions to sell their readers what they want to read.This singular narrative on China is just so thick that if you publish just about anything that doesn’t have the anti-China/ scary China angle a large portion of the audience will call it suspect, they just don’t believe it — some will even accuse you of being a Chinese government collaborator haha. Seriously.

What’s incredible is that many MSM journalists tend to treat China as a land immune to fact checkers, as if they can make just about any claim and nobody is going weigh their truth properties or bias ratios.

China has recently lifted their ban on only 1 child rule per family, now allowing 2. They feel their economy can now support it and they certainly have no lack in brand new available housing/cities. In America, we feel inundated by the Chinese. They have taken our jobs, they are buying our real estate and their kids flood our universities. The Chinese plan for the future and have the best and brightest scientists and architects in the world seem to have the freedom to use their skills at the free will of their government. In America, we feel “one upped” by the Chinese and are always looking for ways to make ourselves feel better by their progress by ignoring the real facts. Typical of American media.

Not sure if I missed something, but from your video and photos it looks pretty empty to me. That certainly doesn’t mean that it couldn’t become filled with people and life, but most of the shots in your video and photos are of huge buildings with maybe a few cars or people. The fact that there are a few people living there doesn’t mean that it’s not pretty desolate. I can’t myself imagine wanting to move someplace with such low density.

I did, and I do believe the conclusions. I’m not disputing that. I’m just pointing out that if you look through your images on this page, you are showing a bunch of buildings and almost no people, which kind of undermines your point. (If you showed a bunch of people walking around downtown streets or in parks, it would be much more convincing.)

stumbled upon this article while i was doing my research on ghost cities around the world. And it is nowhere like in China. However nowadays, 6-7 years after this article was published the Chinese govt is relocating wholesale markets near these ghost towns in order to populate them. In 2013 it all seemed like a real estate price bubble, and as i have read now it starts to crack. Anyway, let see what happens next.

I am a student from Zhengzhou, China. It has been six years after the article was published first. But if I have the honor to invite you to the new Zhengdong, I believe you will be marvel at what Zhengdong

Navigate

About Wade Shepard

I’m an itinerant writer who has been traveling the world since 1999, through 90 countries. I wrote Ghost Cities of China, a book which chronicles the two years that I spent in China’s new cities, and have another book about the New Silk Road coming out soon. I’m a regular contributor to Forbes, The Guardian, and the South China Morning Post, and I have been featured on BBC World, VICE, NPR Morning Edition, CNBC Squawk Box, CBC The Current … This is my personal blog where I share stories from the road that don’t fit in anywhere else. In other words, this is my daily diary, raw and real — it is not edited or even proofread. Subscribe below.